You could say that my vocation started from the day
of my baptism. “He will be called Pablo (Paul)”, my
Dad said. “No, Juan (John) is his name,” my mother
responded. At the end, they agreed to call me Juan
Pablo (John Paul). This happened three years before a pope
would be called John Paul.

I was born in
the heart of a large Catholic family. I’m the third
of nine children, and the first of five siblings who
have consecrated our lives to God.

My First Childhood Memory at
Age 3: the CallEvery vocation has a story behind
it, and God willed to link my story to a
saint of our times. Everything started in January of 1979.
Six months before, in Rome, John Paul II had been
elected as the successor of Peter, and the first trip
of his pontificate was to Mexico. I did not yet
have the use of reason, since I was hardly three
and a half years old, but I know that I
owe my vocation to the pope.

I don’t recall the exact
date. Neither do I recall in what street of Guadalajara
we met, or if there were a lot of people
around, or if it was a sunny or cloudy day.
My memory retains only a few seconds of that day
– but they were seconds that set the course of
the rest of my life. They were just instants: first,
a cry “There he comes!” and then shortly afterwards, a
popemobile came along, and standing in it was a man
dressed in white, smiling and blessing everyone. His eyes met
mine and his smile captivated me. An instant later, the
popemobile was gone, and the Pope too, but a little
seed began to grow in me. It was a seed

that his gaze and his smile had planted in my
heart: “I want to be like him. I want to
be a priest.” This is the first memory that God
wanted me to have of my entire life. It was
the start of a vocation to be a priest for
all eternity.

That seed, which God put in my soul
at the age of three, fell in very fertile soil,
since God had also thought of the family in which
that seed would grow. There were many of us kids
in the family, with all that it implies as regards
our daily quarrels, scoldings, and punishments, not to mention the
pranks and the escapes from home and school. But every
night at home, we all gathered around Mom and Dad
to pray the Hail Mary’s of the rosary to our
Mother in heaven. And every Sunday, after getting ready as
if it were for a party, we went to church
to attend Sunday Mass. There, that “I want to be
like him. I want to be a priest,” matured year
by year until the day when God passed by my
life again and invited me to leave my family to
follow him.

Meeting the LegionI was 11 years old.
During that year, several priests had come through my school
to invite us to get to know their congregations. One
day, a very joyful and very dynamic Spanish priest appeared
and invited me to visit the apostolic school. He was
a Legionary of Christ. Once again, those words “I want
to be like him. I want to be a priest”
echoed in me, and I was almost sure that it
was as a Legionary that I would fulfill that dream.

From that moment on, I had various opportunities of seeing
that deep gaze and captivating smile of John Paul II.
Our gaze met again in the Basilica of Our Lady
of Guadalupe when he came to Mexico for the second
time in 1990. I was already in the apostolic school,
and that moment was like a confirmation that I was
going the right way. Three years later, I met that
gaze again in Madrid, Spain. I also saw him in
Rome on various occasions. And always from my soul, there
springs a sense of gratitude toward the man who was
the instrument God used to call me to the priesthood.

A Family that Followed ChristGod also looked upon the
fertile ground where the seed of my vocation grew, because
without my realizing it, other seeds were growing right beside
me. Three years after I decided to leave everything to
follow Christ, my sister Genoveva, who is one year younger
than me, also left everything to follow him as a
consecrated woman in the Regnum Christi Movement. A few years
later, Claudia, the second of the girls, left everything and
decided to follow Christ as a consecrated woman. Then, two
more sisters, Gaby and Carolina, did the same. For me,
it has been a source of fortitude in my vocation’s
difficult moments to know that my sisters participate with me
in this call from God to leave everything and follow
him in the Regnum Christi Movement.

It’s comforting to know
that my parents—to whom I owe so much for all
their support, and for having made our home such fruitful
soil for my vocation—also participate as Movement members, along with
my youngest sister who just decided last year to give
a year of her life as a co-worker.

An Extraordinary
Grace on a Personal Anniversary25 years after that first
meeting on that unknown street of Guadalajara, God gave me
an unimaginable gift. It was April 10, 2004 and I
was in Rome studying philosophy. I had never thought I
would acolyte the Easter Mass of Pope John Paul II
that year. It was the last Easter Vigil Mass he
would ever preside over. For me, it was a very
moving event of immense significance, not only because I was
in front of this great man, this giant of the
faith, this saint, but because providentially in that year I
was celebrating the 25th anniversary of God’s call to my
soul to follow him in the priesthood—a call for which
God had used Pope John Paul II as an instrument.

I would never have imagined that I would see so
close up the purity of his eyes, hear his voice
directly, and receive his blessing from just a step away.
At the end of that Mass, on my knees in
front of him, I took hold of his hand and
kissed it; this was the hand by which God gave
me that marvelous gift of my priestly vocation. Once again,
our eyes met, and once again, his smile captivated me.

Now, as a priest, I know that “from the window
of heaven,” he looks down and sees me; he blesses
me and accompanies me in this ministry to which God
called me through him.

Father Juan Pablo Álvarez was born in
Guadalajara (Mexico) on June 26, 1975. He entered the apostolic
school of the Legion of Christ in Mexico City in
July of 1987. In 1990, he went to Valencia, Spain,
to finish his high school studies. From 1992 to 1996,
he was in Salamanca (Spain) doing his novitiate and then
his humanistic studies. In September of 1996, he arrived to
Rome to start his studies in philosophy. From 1997 to
2001, he helped in youth ministry and vocational work in
Monterrey (Mexico) and in Santiago (Chile). He was also a
formator in the apostolic school of Medellín, Columbia. From September
of 2001 onward, he has been in Rome, earning his
licentiate in philosophy from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. He
is currently working toward his licentiate in moral theology.